If you value any level of normalcy in your dailyroutine--if you like to sleep past dawn in the morning and you expect to have dinner at a respectable hour in the evening--then I suggest you not go camping in the mountains with a photographer.
At 5 AM every one of the 21 days we trekked in Nepal, the obnoxiously loud alarm on my watch would BEEP-BEEP-BEEP to let me know that it was time to drag my sorry self from my warm and comfy down sleeping bag and go outside the tent to see what the early light was doing. (The alarm would wake Leah too, but she had the good sense to roll over and go back to sleep.)
At 5 PM every evening when our trek cook Pema was ready to serve his wonderful soup--a culinary treat that would have any sane person at-the-ready, spoon in hand, the minute the soup bowl was placed on the table--my salivary glands would instead be all worked-up over the thought of sweet sunset light. (Leah and our Nepali guide KC would begin dinner without me.)
With apologies to Willie Nelson, I say: Mamas, think twice before letting your babies grow up to be landscape photographers.
A big heavy expedition down parka was my most precious piece of gear as I set out on my morning and evening vision quests. I’d zip the jacket up tight, put my camera on a tripod, then stand and wait...and shiver in the cold Himalayan air...and look toward the highest mountains on the planet.
It’s the surprises that I think make the best landscape pictures so I made sure I had a good vantage point to view Mother Nature’s light show, wondering what kind of tricks she had up her sleeve. What would it be this time? Clouds? Mists? Shadows?
Yes, I was missing an hour of morning sleep, and yes the soup was a bit cold when I made my way to the dinner table in the evening.
Oh well. We can’t all be normal.
